Flight to Puska

In 1919 a New Zealand scientist, Ernest Rutherford, split the first atom and theorized that vast amounts of energy could be produced from what he called nuclear fission.

During 1935 the premier of Russia, Joseph Stalin, chanced by the information in a mining journal and filed it away as “very interesting.” 

In June of 1937 Hitler was rattling his sabers and Stalin was convinced that Russia might well be on Hitler’s hit list. He needed a foolproof deterrent and remembered the Rutherford report. He immediately put his staff and all foreign embassies on the hunt for anything relating to nuclear fission and while there was not much information on the subject available, what there was convinced the premier that if he could be first to control nuclear fission he very well might become premier of Europe and maybe even the world.

His efforts to build a nuclear bomb became his singular guiding obsession, and he did whatever it took to make the project viable. From kidnapping hundreds of miners to spying on the Americans’ Manhattan project, he left no stone unturned in his diabolical quest.